Volume 41, 2016
Tristan Haze
Pages 539-541
A Counterexample to the Breckenridge-Magidor Account of Instantial Reasoning
In a recent paper, Breckenridge and Magidor argue for an interesting and counterintuitive account of instantial reasoning. According to this account, in arguments such as one beginning with ‘There is some x such that x is mortal. Let O be such an x. . . . ,’ the ‘O’ refers to a particular object, although we cannot know which. I give and defend a simple counterexample involving the notion of an unreferred-to object.